Oh, but I guess it's still a week (and then some) too early for that, huh. Anyway, this message is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Lunaescence moderators, sponsored by the letter Q, and made possible by Sally and users like you!

...on a more serious note, we’ve run into something of a roadblock. Although we do have more moderators working the queue, there are simply too many new submissions coming in for us to make a noticeable dent. That is, even though the size of the queue has decreased by over 100 since the beginning of the month, we’re at a point where 1-5 (on average) new submissions come in by the time a moderator has finished looking at one, due to older submissions taking longer than average. Thus, our attention is divided between taking care of older submissions and keeping the new ones from piling up.

For this reason, we’re planning to lock the queue for a short time, starting this Friday, July 27th*. This means that new submissions or updates from unvalidated authors will not be possible. Ideally, the lockdown will only last the weekend. We will still be looking at submissions in the meantime.

Another announcement will be made (or a nice, bolded edit will be placed at the bottom of this one) once the lockdown is over. While we don’t have a definite “end date”, the process should not take more than a week, so please bear with us! By the end of this, we should have the entire queue cleared and can start again with a clean slate.

Questions? Concerns? Please send those to our joint moderator e-mail account (moderators[dot]luna[at]gmail[dot]com), so as to ensure that one of us sees it.

*Depending on your timezone, you may find that this lockdown period begins a day earlier than noted. In the same vein, it could also begin a day later. It all depends on when Sally does it.

Edit by KS: The site is back up...obviously...since you're reading this. Due to the unforeseen circumstance of the site being down for running out of bandwidth the exact weekend we were going to do this, the downtime is going to run a bit later than planned. A real monthly announcement (with features and everything) will happen when it unlocks.

In the meantime...signups for a fic trade running through August can be found here in the forums. There will be no trade in September, due to the beginning of school. The next trade after this one will be in October and may or may not be Halloween-themed.

Comments

Sounds reasonable! Hopefully all will go well! Good luck! ~Koneko

- Konekochan07 on 07/23/12 - 03:49PM

I really don't mind this because in the end, it will help speed up the moderation process, which makes everyone happy.

- Karnia on 07/23/12 - 07:46PM

Any chance you could put a rush on my validation T_T I was literally just starting to write chapters again!

On the other hand, I understand that this probably isn't gonna happen, and no worries if it doesn't. I understand how backed up things can get. RPG I'm on right now always has to kick it into overdrive when we get a full page of bonuses or updates that aren't approved or even looked at yet.

Besides, even if I'm still unvalid (invalid?) I can always just stockpile chapters to bombard you with at the end of the lockout XD

- IWriteWithATalon on 07/23/12 - 11:29PM

It makes sense to lock down the queue, all I'm hoping for is to get stories validated so I can change my status from member to author :)

- Fiyre on 07/24/12 - 10:44AM

Sorry to bother you, but I had a quick question. My story "Digital Destinies" was one of the few selected in the theme for featured stories is small categories, or fics located in categories with fewer than a hundred submissions in 2009 of October.

I had to recently update the warnings to a slightly older audience and due to my actions the ribbon was removed. Is there any way to fix that, or is it permanent?

Just thought I'd ask. I know you guys are super busy right now, and I apologize for the inconvenience. Hope everything starts to slow down for you all. Thanks again! :)

- GuardianAngel07 on 07/24/12 - 04:58PM

GuardianAngel07 - That happens when you edit story properties for a featured story. It's an easy fix for us. All it takes is a moderator finding it and making two clicks. Your ribbon should be back now.

- Kerrigan Sheehan on 07/24/12 - 05:25PM

Thank you ever so much! :3

- GuardianAngel07 on 07/24/12 - 07:56PM

Yay! Hope everything goes well! This'll give me some time to write more! And it will help speed up moderations. And it does make sense to lock down the queue. But, this'll benefit everyone in the end. It'll also cause people to send in more stuff, XD

- littleart425 on 07/26/12 - 03:22PM

Few questions.
1) I was reminded by GuardianAngel07's comment that my story (now named "Wish and Want") lost its ribbon. Can you put that back for me? (I kept forgetting to ask.)
2) Once the submission queue is under control, will the mods start looking over the validation queue?

- Prophet Lexicon on 07/26/12 - 11:38PM

@Prophet:

My guess is that once the queue is under control (meaning that they take a day or two after whenever it gets opened again to deal with the FLOOD they're going to get when it's open again), then they'll deal with it; I thought they might run through it all before the queue shutdown, since that would allow more authors to continue publishing, but considering it's Thursday night and still not done, I'm guessing they decided it was better to put their time toward queue reduction.

- The Wolf Sage on 07/26/12 - 11:49PM

Prophet Lexicon - Somebody beat me to your ribbon.

Both of you - Keep in mind that newer mods don't make the final decision on author validations because they don't yet have the authorization level to actually flick the switch, so to speak. They can help and give opinions, but it takes someone with certain permissions to do the actual validating part. This means that it's also somewhat dependent on when a very small number of mods have a few hours to spare, preferably at the same time, which can be hard with unpredictable IRL stuff like family-related things. Before we even start on validations, we actually have to sort the list of people who have requested validation because some who fell on split decisions have since gone inactive. (It's kind of pointless for us to go over a validation decision for someone who randomly came back one day, requested it, but hasn't posted since six months before they requested.)

We also usually only do 2-3 people at a time because it takes a very, very long time to validate one author. To put it into perspective, it can take as long for one moderator to come to a decision, make an error list, and write the letter as it takes for the same mod to do at least 15-20 queue stories, sometimes more if it's a decision against validation, as that means more issues to list. Because of the time involved, it's not likely to happen when there's a big queue or a high submission volume. It's kind of something we do when the site is quiet and we have time. (Also, not every author who gets validated requested it. Not everybody realizes that you can request it, and, sometimes, we just see someone we think deserves it and bug one another for a second opinion.)

- Kerrigan Sheehan on 07/27/12 - 09:06AM

Good luck with the submissions! You're all hard workers and I'd like to say, "Thank you!" For that.